Jeffrey D. Sadow is an associate professor of political science at Louisiana State University Shreveport. If you're an elected official, political operative or anyone else upset at his views, don't go bothering LSUS or LSU System officials about that because these are his own views solely.
This publishes Sunday through Thursday with the exception of 7 holidays. Also check out his Louisiana Legislature Log especially during legislative sessions (in "Louisiana Politics Blog Roll" below).

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9.7.13

Dueling voucher pieces shows opponents' desperation

I doubt it was planned, but what turned into a New Orleans Times-Picayune version of point/counterpoint on the
issue of school vouchers illustrates well the poverty of the case against their
use in Louisiana’s provision of education and in a way desperate enough to be
telling that the real goal is distraction from the main issue.

Almost simultaneously published on site were a column wondering whether
the several million of dollars that went into this year’s program was spent
wisely and another concluding the initial indications showed the program’s
administration was off to a good start. The program allows students who
otherwise would attend a poorly-performing school to have the state pay for
their tuition to attend a qualifying private or public school, at a level below
what taxpayers would have to give to the public school that would have been
attended.

The negative
piece, written by former reporter and political shill for various elected Democrats,
and current journalism school director Bob Mann, concentrated mainly on the one
school where auditors discovered misuse of funds, and more generally charged
that “education ‘reforms’ appear to be as shoddy and deceitful as the product”
produced by that school, on the basis of that and that the large majority of
audited schools did not keep records in a way that definitively allowed for
determination that money used had proper accounting controls and was for
educational expenditures. Throughout, rhetorical tricks were used in place of
logical analysis to try to make these points, supplemented by the ignoring of any
context at all.

In particular, the piece tried to con the reader into accepting the selective
shortcomings of a process as indicative of the failure of the policy’s
substance. In the twoaudits,
only one deviant school was found, and interestingly enough because it was one
of the few that actually followed procedures correctly. Absence of the ability
to definitively determine the status of others does not mean they also have
problems. In fact, it seems to suggest the real problem was that the Department
of Education did not instruct well in what kind of recordkeeping was expected
on this particular issue, so endemic was the problem, also likely because of
the several other criteria used in the audits (some were informational only), in
most cases this information was available and showed few problems.

But to sidestep from there to the allegation that this means the
“reforms are “shoddy and deceitful” is intellectually dishonest. All we know is
the procedures worked to catch one problem, and many didn’t follow procedures
for whatever reason. That evidence does not allow for the tarring of the entire
procedural operation as a failure, much less the substance of the program
itself. It does mean DOE needs to reinforce the necessity of correct
implementation of the reporting procedures (and even here Mann blows that layup
with an analogy to tax payments and audits that is incorrect.)

By contrast, the more positive
piece written by former Times-Picayune
sportswriter, now its opinion columnist James Varney placed a premium on solid
analysis and brought proper context into play. He correctly noted on what had
been audited – again, admittedly not everything – showed only the one material
violator out of 117 schools and that opponents such as Mann were trying to
substitute the exception for the rule.

He also swung the focus on performance that provided the proper
context, noting that several schools had been removed from eligibility because of
poor performance after one year and yet public schools who had been performing
that way for decades did not suffer the same withdrawal of funding. It exposed
a basic hypocrisy in the Mann piece, who found it convenient enough only to ask
whether money is well spent on the program – again, confusing procedure with
substance – and not on whether the same could be said about significant swaths
of public education institutions in Louisiana – institutions in fact whose
former students are the intended beneficiaries of the program.

Finally, he did not confuse procedure with substance, praising the
rigorous requirements of required oversight (even as he did not address the
failure of many schools to report adequately on those couple of the several
areas of evaluation). He offered no judgment of the program substance, other
than the observation of known failure of many public schools by contrast, the proper
course of analysis as the results aren’t in yet. Until DOE presents a cohort
analysis of student progress among three groups – those in failing schools,
those who were awarded a voucher but did not use it, and those who were awarded
one and used it – no judgment can be made about the substance of the program,
and Varney refuses to copy Mann in making the eager rush to polemics to assert
something that simply isn’t supported.

So if we equate the argument to Little Big Horn, Mann dons a cavalry uniform
and Varney dresses primitively, with Mann’s version riddled with arrows. I don’t
know if the T-P put them up to this,
which usually is admitted when arranged, but it certainly gave readers a nice
comparison and contrast (and as a result maybe tells them one particular
J-school features more the learning of rhetorical devices than of critical
thinking ability). And no doubt many of the low information, low interest consumers
among them won’t be able to discern the logical failings in Mann’s piece and thereby
gorged on the red meat he threw them, oblivious to the arrows. However, in
reality the question of the quality of the scholarship voucher program won’t be
resolved by dubious assertion, but by data.

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